Hamas has failed its first real test
In the wake of the Tel Aviv bombing, Con Coughlin says that Israel’s patience is being stretched to the limit, and that the new Palestinian government must learn realism — fast Ever since Hamas won control of the Palestinian government last January, the world has been waiting to see how it would respond to the first real test of its political credibility. Those of a more sympathetic disposition argued that, fettered by the responsibilities of high office, Hamas would respect its obligations as Israel’s negotiating partner, and tone down the uncompromising rhetoric that had brought it to power.
The realists, on the other hand, took the view that an organisation whose entire raison d’être has been built on indiscriminate suicide bombings, and a missionary zeal to eradicate the state of Israel from the map of the Near East, was incapable of such a radical change of heart. And so it has proved. By refusing to condemn the Passover suicide bomb attack on Tel Aviv, in which nine people died, the Hamas leadership has failed the test, and by so doing has confirmed the view of many in the new Israeli government that it cannot be taken seriously as a peace partner.
Technically, of course, the Tel Aviv bombing was not the work of Hamas but of its Iranian-backed rival, Islamic Jihad. The day before the bombing Ramadan Shallah, Islamic Jihad’s leader, addressed a conference in Tehran at which he re-affirmed his group’s determination to send suicide bombers into Israel. At the same conference the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, boasted that the state of Israel was ‘heading towards annihilation’ and would soon be ‘wiped off the face of the map’. He was speaking a few days after Iran announced it had successfully completed the first stage of uranium enrichment.
By ordering the suicide bombing during the Jewish Passover holiday, Islamic Jihad sought to inflict carnage on a far broader scale than the immediate vicinity of the central bus station in Tel Aviv. The group’s leadership will have been well aware of the dramatic impact the last Passover suicide bombing — at the Israeli resort of Netanya in March 2002 — had on the region’s political landscape. Hamas claimed responsibility for that attack, which killed 30 people and injured 140, and the then Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, responded by laying waste to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters. Sharon held Arafat directly responsible for the Netanya attack, even though he had nothing to do with giving the actual order to carry out the bombing. The Israelis blamed Arafat because he presided over an administration that had engendered a political climate whereby any action that caused Israeli deaths was justified.
The new Israeli government of Ehud Olmert will now apply the same logic to Hamas. For if the Hamas leadership has any serious intention of entering into dialogue with the Israelis, it would not seek to justify the slaughter of innocent Israeli holidaymakers as an act of self-defence. Innocent Palestinian civilians are, it is true, on occasion killed during Israeli military operations, but these deaths are rarely caused deliberately, and when they are the soldiers held responsible are subject to disciplinary action.
It is unlikely that Hamas will take punitive action against the Islamic Jihad leadership, even though the two groups are engaged in a bitter rivalry over how best to fulfil their ultimate objective of eradicating Israel’s existence. For, just as it suited Arafat to have Hamas do his dirty work, it now suits Hamas’s long-term political objectives to have a nihilist group like Islamic Jihad making sure that a negotiated settlement on the Israel–Palestine dispute is unattainable.
This is both a serious problem and a big disappointment for Israel, not least because at last month’s general election the Israeli electorate voted to consolidate the tentative first steps that have been taken towards establishing a permanent settlement with the Palestinians. Despite all the anti-Israel propaganda, ordinary Israelis are desperate for peace. Forget the fact that for the past six decades they have been engaged in a relentless struggle for their very existence. The second intifada, launched by Arafat five years ago, has brought the long-suffering populations of both Israel and Palestine to the brink of exhaustion. And after the success of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza last year, the Israelis are keen to expedite the process whereby they vacate most of the remainder of the territory they occupied in 1967. The fact that the Israeli Labour party received a higher percentage of the vote than the rejectionist Likud is indicative of most Israelis’ preference for a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.
But for that to happen the Israelis need a negotiating partner. It is a measure of how far the Israelis are prepared to go to achieve their goal of a lasting peace that they still cling to the hope that Hamas, for all the evidence to the contrary, might still prove to be up to the task. This would explain the relative restraint that has so far been demonstrated by Ehud Olmert, the new Israeli Prime Minister, to the Tel Aviv bombing. It would be easy for him to demonstrate his political cojones by ordering the Israeli army to remove the Hamas government before it had even had a chance to settle into office.
Tempting as this might be, such action would ultimately prove counterproductive. Given Israel’s undisputed military superiority — not just over the Palestinians but over the entire region — it would be a relatively straightforward task for Israel to set its borders unilaterally and withdraw behind the heavily fortified wall that is already being constructed along what many believe will be Israel’s final frontiers.
That might solve the problem of Israel’s borders, but it won’t solve the problem of what to do with the Palestinians. And the failure to deal with the Palestinian people’s perfectly reasonable desire for statehood will have long-term repercussions not just for Israel but the wider world. It is not just al-Qa’eda’s recruiting sergeants that use the Palestinian issue to sign up the next generation of suicide bombers. It is a cause that resonates throughout the Middle East and beyond; most of the anti-Iraq war demonstrations in London have featured proPalestinian banners and slogans. Indeed, a number of Arab governments, such as Jordan and Egypt, which have fought longrunning battles against radical Islamic groups, have consistently warned Washington that the failure to achieve a lasting settlement of the Palestinian issue could result in their being overthrown by Hamas-style regimes. The Hamas leadership is well aware of the emotive energy that the Palestinian cause generates, whether in Jerusalem, Cairo or Baghdad, and appears determined to exploit it rather than to address the far more challenging task of seeking a solution to the impasse that does not entail the oblivion of Israel.
But if the new Palestinian government persists with this wholly unrealistic approach, the Israelis may have no alternative to getting rid of it permanently — and to hell with the consequences.
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